Crawling
by Ally Ranger
Summary: A predator contemplates prey. Please heed the story warnings.


Title: Crawling   
Author: Ally Ranger  
Rating: R  
Feedback: Feedback and constructive criticism welcome. As are chocolate covered Jedi and M&M's.   
Archive: No.  
Disclaimer: All things Pitch Black are the property of USA Films. Characters are used without permission and no money has been made from their use.  
Summary:A predator contemplates its prey.  
**WARNINGS:** References to child abuse. Lots of swearing.  
AMBIENCE: Linkin Park's Crawling (from whom I borrowed the title). 

_________________________

Your first mistake was when you let me live. You had the chance to kill me -- there was oppourtunity enough for you to spill my blood and send me straight to hell. 

You made your choice and you chose wrong.

Now you won't live to regret it.

_________________________

We're at opposite ends of the skiff, Imam on the floor between us. He's praying again -- constantly fucking praying. I think it's lulled you to sleep, that constant chanting to appease his God. Why he's still trying is beyond me. You'd think he would realise that his God aint happy with him. Three boys all gone? Fuck, Imam really pissed his precious Allah off. And the stupid fool continues to pray.

He asked me to join him once and I wanted nothing more than to laugh at him. Me? Pray to God? The Big Man upstairs and me? Well we aint on speaking terms and haven't been for sometime now. The man's a total fucker. Bastard doesn't care one bit for his flock. If he did, I would never have been on that ship. All the fucked up shit in my life would never have happened and perhaps I'd be a good upstanding citizen instead of another mug shot and barcode in a file on a computer. If God were so all powerful and beneavolent, then I'd never have been beaten and raped as a kid. 

Fuck, I was nine when I learned how to suck cock and I was ten when my carers decided that I was old enough to fuck and ready for a test drive. I was eleven when I killed that bastard, twelve when I caught up with his gang-banging buddies and put them all in early graves.

If God really cared, would he have condemed me to a childhood as an unwilling object of pleasure and abuse? Would he have let me spend my thirteenth birthday in a jail cell? And fourteen, fifteen, sixteen? Hopping from planet to planet escaping from one kind of scum only to find another. Then there's seventeen... now there's a year I would rather fucking forget. The predators on the inside... Bigger mother fuckers than the ones I'd been runnin' from. Still runnin', it seems. Maybe I'll never stop.

You know all about running, don't you? You're just like me; escaping who you are, disgusted by what you've become. You don't have to say anything, I *know*. I knew the moment I saw you. You hate yourself.

Quite similar, you and I, though you are fighting what you are, trying to become someone else entirely. Do you really think that you can pretend? I *see* you. I *know* you. I *am* you and your pretences don't fool me. They never did. That would surprise you, wouldn't it? To know that I see right through every layer, mask and barrier that you have erected around your true self? Yes, I think you would be surprised. Shocked, even. You've hidden yourself for so long. Damn, how you must feel now that your tough veneer is eroding away. And that shocks me, the very fact that you are letting it slide -- willing it to go away. Do you hate it that much? So much that you must strip your armour away?

You don't see, do you? You hate yourself and the masks that you wear. But what you don't realise is that you and me both are creatures of necessity. We are what we are because we have to be. Survival, that's all that matters, right? That's why you've got to go. 

You're a threat. On that planet you were useful, Riddick. We needed you. Now your very presence on this ship could fuck with my one true chance at freedom.

God damn, but your face graces the walls of each and every cop shop in the galaxy. Mercs are out for your blood. You are THE big shit and wherever you go, mercs will follow. So you're going to die. Imam too. 

Both of you. Soon. You're the only things linking me to the Hunter-Gratzner and you will die.

You thought I was harmless, didn't you? Just a sweet fucking little girl, pretending to be a boy, trying to survive on the run? How old did you have me pegged at? How innocent? I bet you even thought I was cute? The hero worship, the adulation...you were lapping it up with the rest of them. Soon you'll be joining them and you can all compare notes.

Then I can let go of my own masks. I never did like playing pretend. Fuck, I don't even like *Jack*. Fucked up little runt of a girl. If I'd been her when they came into my bedroom, I'd have killed myself long ago. Audrey...now she's a different story. And you are about to meet her.

  
Soon, Riddick. Very soon.

_________________________


End file.
